The Senses

Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives

Edited by Fiona Macpherson

Description

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. But how many senses are there? How many could there be? What makes the senses different? What interaction takes place between the senses? This book is a guide to thinking about these questions. Together with an extensive introduction to the topic, the book contains the key classic papers on this subject together with nine newly commissioned essays.One reason that these questions are important is that we are receiving a huge influx of new information from the sciences that challenges some traditional philosophical views about the senses. This information needs to be incorporated into our view of the senses and perception. Can we do this whilst retaining our pre-existing concepts of the senses and of perception or do we need to revise our concepts? If they need to be revised, then in what way should that be done? Research in diverse areas, such as the nature of human perception, varieties of non-human animal perception, the interaction between different sensory modalities, perceptual disorders, and possible treatments for them, calls into question the platitude that there are five senses, as well as the pre-supposition that we know what we are counting when we count them as five (or more).This book will serve as an inspiring introduction to the topic and as a basis from which further new research will grow.

The Senses

Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives

Edited by Fiona Macpherson

Table of Contents

Section 1: Classic Papers2. Excerpt from On the Soul, Aristotle3. Aristotle on Demarcating the Five Senses, Richard Sorabji4. Some Remarks About the Senses, H. P. Grice5. Distinguishing the Senses, J. W. Roxbee Cox6. The Senses of Martians, C. A. J. Coady7. The Senses, excerpt from Perception and Cognition, John Heil8. Characterizing the Senses, Mark Leon9. Categorizing the Senses, Norton Nelkin10. Sight and Touch, M. G. F. Martin11. Making Sense of the Senses: Individuating Modalities in Humans and Other Animals, Brian L. Keeley

Section 2: New Papers12. On the Nature of the Senses, Richard Gray13. Re-imagining, Re-Viewing and Re-Touching, Robert Hopkins14. The Senses, John Heil15. A Proprioceptive Account of the Sensory Modalities, John O'Dea16. The Senses as Psychological Kinds, Matthew Nudds17. Tastes, Temperatures, and Pains, A. D. Smith18. The Sense of Agency, Tim Bayne19. Cross Modal Cuing and Selective Attention, Austen ClarkIndex

The Senses

Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives

Edited by Fiona Macpherson

Reviews and Awards

"The Senses is a terrific book. [It] gets us to focus on important issues in philosophy of perception. It provides countless examples of scientific findings relevant to the philosophical issues. It makes prominent a rich, largely unexplored literature. And it serves as a solid foundation on which future research will undoubtedly flourish." --Notre Dame Philosophical Review